18th International Venice Architecture Biennale Exhibition 2023

“The Laboratory of the Future”

Kwaeε, David Adjaye

“First of all, Africa is the laboratory of the future. We are the youngest continent in the world, with an average age half that of Europe and the United States and ten years younger than Asia.

We are the fastest urbanizing continent in the world, with a growth of nearly 4% per year.

This rapid and largely unanticipated growth is generally at the expense of the local environment and ecosystems, putting us face-to-face with climate change at regional and global levels.

But hope is a powerful currency.

The vision of a modern, diverse and inclusive society is attractive and convincing, but as long as it remains an image, it is only a mirage.


AD—WO Ghebbi More than representation is needed, and architects have always played a key role in translating images into reality.

Second, La Biennale di Venezia itself is also a kind of laboratory of the future, a space and a time in which speculations about the discipline's relevance for this world — and for the world to come.

Today, the word “laboratory” is more generally associated with scientific experimentation and evokes images of a specific type of room or building.

But Richard Sennett's review of the word “workshop,” from which the word “laboratory” comes, deepens the concept of collaborative efforts differently.


Kiran Nadar Museum of Art KNMA In the ancient world, in China, as in Greece, the workshop was the most essential institution for anchoring civic life.

We envision our exhibition as a kind of workshop, a laboratory where architects and practitioners from a wide range of creative disciplines draw examples from their contemporary practices that chart the way forward by the public, participants and visitors alike, by imagining for themselves what the future holds.
Lesley Lokko

South Africa

“Lesley shows determination and courage by using two worn but irreplaceable words in his title, “laboratory and the future”, to make their meaning more important.

You will understand how much his approach is similar to the proposal of a pact between visitors to La Biennale, the world of architecture and culture in general.

All this is to speak to the whole world, and this is the real reason a curator takes on the responsibility of organizing an international La Biennale exhibition.”
Roberto Cicutto

Saudi Arabia